Jazz Village Campus

Welcome to our NEW Jazz Village Campus, a place where you can bring children (preK-5) to engage in high-quality music learning experiences FOR FREE! Experience music learning as students rotate between rhythmic activities (25 minutes each) and performances (50 minutes each). You can bring your snack and lunch. It is located at West Plaza Park, off North Street in Healdsburg. There will be picnic areas available.

Workshops are designed by Music Is First musicians/educators who are highly experienced in teaching in public schools as well as being world-class artists, including some who come to perform at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. These workshops address the VAPA and California Content Standards in music and other academic subject areas such as history, social studies, and literacy. Teachers can request a list.

Please look over the menu below. Your class can come for as many days as you would like, for one or two sessions per day, space permitting.

Each day, your class can participate in two of the four “rhythm section” activities per session and or and attend one of the performances. Children can attend both sessions for more workshops.

Please fill out the online registration form HERE with your preferences of activities per session. Priority is given in order of confirmation. If you would like to participate multiple days, please fill the form out twice or three times. We will make every effort to match you with your top choices. You will receive a confirmation letter with your exact day(s) and activity times along with the VAPA Standards these activities address.

June 3-7, 9 to Noon (closed Wednesday, June 5)
Daily schedule; two sessions daily with six workshops per session.

Rhythm Section: Four workshops in one designated area with four different teachers, for 25 to 30 students (25 minute activities), total sessions two per hour. You can do all four if you register for both sessions, 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. (space permitting).

• Putting it Together with CUPS (2nd-5th grade): Students will learn the cup song game, rhythm games, be able to play the cup game made famous by the movie “Pitch Perfect.” Students will listen to a diverse array of sounds without any visual stimulation or clues, and be asked to distinguish sounds from everyday objects.

• Recycling Rhythms (K-5th grade): This class will focus on the art of bucket drumming using unusual objects as instruments and creating rhythms. It will go over stick and hand techniques, independence, rudiments and composition, and the art of funk and buckets. The goal is for students to connect and apply what is learned in music to learning in other art forms and subject areas, and to hear rhythms in cultural contexts.

• The Rock Game (2nd-5th grade): This class demonstrates how to work together as an ensemble or community. The Rock Game is adapted from one that originated in Ghana, West Africa. The goal is to show that if one person is “out of sync” with the group, then the whole group falls apart—a metaphor for community and musical collaboration. Students will learn how everyone’s voice is important. They will learn to accompany a song from Africa while playing percussion rhythms and explore rhythm games from around the world. The goal is for students to develop listening skills, learn to connect everyday sounds with musical sounds, understand that any object can be used as an instrument, gain an awareness of patterns in sequence and when to start and end.

• Interactive Art Wall (K-5th grade): Local artists will help students create art to recorded or live music with the intent to make a Jazz Village Campus mural. Some classes will be asked to create images based on a musical theme they are given ahead of time; other classes might be asked to create art based on the feeling they get from the music. If available, Festival musicians will visit and play music while the students are painting. The goal is to create art based on the concept of improvisation: “paint what you hear.”

Music and Literacy, with Matthew Gollub
50-minute performance, 25-30 students per session

Matthew Gollub, the creator of the award-winning “Jazz Fly” children’s books, will treat students to rhythmic storytelling and drumming, engaging them with interactive percussion, writing, and tips on how to effectively manipulate individual sounds in the spoken word. Gollub performs renditions of his books and inspires students to read and write for pleasure. Children will relate because of his performance skills, akin to Hip-Hop, and his ability to “speak jazz” as well as speak Spanish. His program covers five State Language Arts Standards (reading, writing, listening, speaking and language) with verve! To maximize the educational value of his events, he shares lesson plans and other prep materials with teachers beforehand.

Session 2 – 11 to noon, and 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.: 50 minute presentation for 30 children per session

In this program, called “Routes of the Blues,” Guy explores two prominent styles of the Blues, Mississippi Delta and the Piedmont/East Coast forms, through storytelling and playing 6-string and 12-string guitars and harmonica.

Incorporating geography, history and student interaction, Guy takes students on a journey that slices through a fascinating part of the American musical landscape. He will show how the primary blues instruments have their own language to best tell certain kinds of stories, expressing feelings of longing, heartache or humor. He shows by example how the blues as a musical form emerged from work songs. Students will participate in the rhythmic and kinesthetic experience of a work song by singing and moving.